[Infowarrior] - Iranian president's new blog

[Richard Forno]

Iranian president lambasts US on new blog
Sun Aug 13, 2006 12:21 PM ET
http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=topNews&storyid=2006-08-
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TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran's president has launched a Web log, using his first
entry to recount his poor upbringing and ask visitors to the site if they
think the United States and Israel want to start a new world war.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose speeches are riddled with anti-U.S. rhetoric,
also described how he was angered by American meddling in Iran even when he
was at elementary school.

Ahmadinejad swept to a surprise victory in last year's presidential race by
promising the country's poor a fairer share of Iran's oil wealth and
emphasizing his own humble origins that led many to vote for him as an
"outsider" to Iran's ruling elite.

"During the era that ... living in a city was perfection, I was born in a
poor family in a remote village," he wrote in a blog dated Friday, after
opening with Islamic greetings.

His origins as the son of "a hard-bitten toiler blacksmith" may have been
humble, but he says he excelled at school where he said he came 132nd out of
400,000 in exams to enter university.

As well as promising a better life to the poor, Ahmadinejad has sought to
bolster support by refusing to bow to what he says is Western pressure to
stop Iran's civilian nuclear program. The West says Iran is building an
atomic bomb.

His defiance in the stand-off with the West has often played well in the
Muslim world, where many are angered by U.S. foreign policy in the Middle
East.

Analyst Saeed Laylaz said the site -- available in Persian, Arabic, English
and French at www.ahmadinejad.ir -- may be seeking to win support from
abroad.

"Do you think that the U.S. and Israeli intention and goal by attacking
Lebanon is pulling the trigger for another world war?" the president asks
visitors to the site, offering them the choice to vote 'yes' or 'no'.

Ahmadinejad describes how in the first grade at school -- for those aged
about seven -- he read newspapers with the help of adults about how the then
shah of Iran gave Americans living in Iran immunity from prosecution under
Iranian laws.

"I realized that Mohammad Reza (Shah) attempted to add another page to the
vicious case history which was the humiliation and indignity of the Iranian
people versus Americans," he said.

He describes listening ardently to the speeches of Ayatollah Ruhollah
Khomeini, the shah's vociferous critic and later leader of the 1979 Islamic
revolution that overthrew the monarchy.

He also discusses Iran's bloody 1980-1988 war with Iraq, in which
Ahmadinejad fought as a Revolutionary Guard.

But he admitted his opening blog, which runs to more than 2,300 words in the
English version, was too long. "From now onwards, I will try to make it
simpler and shorter," he wrote.